Inside the July Hot-Fire Test

You're in the bunker now.

Yeah, I'm in the literal test cell right here.

I mean, the engine normally goes right behind us.

And it spans pretty much from, you know, that interface to over there.

And this is the place you do not want to be when the engine goes off.

So, yeah, it was really a phenomenal experience.

test experience.

I was impressed by how many of our investors were there.

We also had community leaders.

We had representatives from the senator's offices.

And even some folks brought their children, which was really incredible, including my own children over there, which was really nice.

And Yeah, I think people left really amazed after seeing that test.

It took a little while to, as always happens when you do an engine test, there's a few hiccups along the way.

And it was a very powerful test.

it was uh our longest duration burn yet we did about a minute and 40 second long burn wow so yeah that's phenomenal let's see this let's see actually the cell hold up to that and if you look at the video footage you'll see steam and other things kind of emanating from the corners of this test cell where the the concrete blocks are giving up their vapor yeah so it's amazing

So let's go back to the test for just a moment.

And, you know, we you did the test initially going into it.

What was the primary outcome you were hoping for?

Yeah, so this test we've been preparing for for a long time, and we've been working, doing tons of modeling, tons of tweaks and changes to the internals of the engine.

We actually expanded the size of the engine, the combustion chamber a bit.

We made a lot of changes inside.

That cylinder looks very... vanilla you know it's just this round cylinder that is a hybrid rocket engine uh but we made a lot of changes in there things unfortunately I can't I can't talk about but um There was a whole lot of different changes made in there.

And the outcome we were expecting to see was one where we were looking to snuff out a certain type of instability or actually three types of instabilities and increase the efficiency of the burn further.

And that leads to what would happen.

So I'll jump to the chase.